The April Lunduke Journal Pledge drive has ended! Thank you to everyone who pitched in to help The Lunduke Journal continue to provide ad-free, Big Tech Free journalism!
The Lunduke Journal would not be possible without your support.
Seriously. Thank you.
-Lunduke
The Vendefoul Wolf Linux Distro has a new release based on Devuan, XLibre, & IceWM. And it uses only 217 MB of RAM. The way it should be.
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The GNOME Foundation's war on X11 continues, with the Alpha release of GNOME 50. Announced by the same GNOME contributor who defaced XLibre project pages (calling them "Nazis" ).
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The German government paid $500,000+, to Arch Linux, to re-write Arch Package Management in Rust. Is Germany hoping to inject backdoors, or other spyware, into Arch using Rust?
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Ads are filling the entirety of the Web -- websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. -- at an increasing rate. Prices for those ad placements are plummeting. Consumers are desperate to use ad-blockers to make the web palatable. Google (and others) are desperate to break and block ad-blockers. All of which results in... more ads and lower pay for creators.
It's a fascinatingly annoying cycle. And there's only one viable way out of it.
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Those in power with openSUSE make it clear they will not allow me anywhere near anything related to the openSUSE project. Ever. For any reason.
Well, that settles that, then! Guess I won't be contributing to openSUSE! 🤣
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The 100x Architect: Why the "Vibe Coding" Argument is a Dangerous Coping Mechanism
I hear it constantly from my fellow nerds: “I’m not worried. Non-coders ‘vibe coding’ AI slop will never be a threat to my job.”
You’re 100% right. Vibe-coded slop isn't the threat. The threat is top-talent developers who also master GenAI tools.
While the skeptics are busy mocking juniors for generating buggy Todo apps, they are missing the real shift: the veterans with 40 years of patterns in their heads who are using GenAI as a 10x multiplier.
The math is simple: 10x1 is 10. 10x10 is 100.
If you are a talented dev (a 10), and you refuse to use the multiplier, you aren't "staying pure"—you’re just being out-scaled by the people who have your skills AND scale themselves with GenAI.
A Field Report from the 100x Front:
In two recent projects—one for a paying client and one for a friend—I built in a few hours by myself what would have traditionally taken a small team a couple of weeks...
Last Tuesday, I tried to put Omarchy on my daily driver laptop. After six days of fighting with it, I'm quitting.
This is the THIRD TIME I've tried to make Omarchy a thing for me, and all three times, I've had nothing but struggle. So, now, we're going back to Manjaro. But before I do, I'll spend a little time experimenting with other distros, live on camera, unscripted. Just for the gawkers.
Whew! It’s been another wild week for Tech News!
Here’s a crazy stat for ya:
We are currently 16 days into 2026, and The Lunduke Journal has already recorded 19 shows (17 of which have been published on every platform, and 2 others to be published this weekend everywhere… but are already available via the MP4 download page). And that’s with taking New Year’s Day off (and getting the flu this week).
It’s a heck of a lot of Tech News, to be sure.
If you only have time to watch a few of shows, I recommend these 3 as being the most interesting (or important… or just… strange) from the last week:
In other words: A pretty gosh-darned crazy week for Linux.
(Those links are to Lunduke.Substack.com, but you can watch all of those shows on any other platform. As always.)
A few other notes on this, most excellent, Friday!
The Lunduke Journal started publishing to TikTok this week. Why? Who knows! Because we can!
If you are a subscriber you can get access to the MP4 download pages (as well as the official forum) by following instructions on the Perks Page.
So, you know, you want one of those.
And, with that, I leave you with a screenshot of the MP4 listing of the shows so far in 2026. Bonkers.
-Lunduke
Holy moly.
This afternoon I sat down to update the 3rd Lunduke Journal Lifetime Subscriber wall — adding in all of you who sent in requests over the last week or so.
And, boy howdy, were there a lot of you! So many, in fact, that the 3rd Lifetime Wall only has room for around 6 or 7 more names (depending on the name lengths)! That’s crazy!
If you want to make it onto “The Lunduke Journal Lifetime Subscriber” Wall number 3… send me an email (bryan at lunduke.com) with the way you would like your name to be displayed.
Or, if you’re not already a Lifetime Subscriber, remedy that for $89. (Which, you know, is a pretty gosh darned good value.) … Then send me that email requesting to be added to the wall.
Once Wall 3 is full, we’ll start in on Wall number 4 (that’s nuts). At the current rate, I expect Wall 4 to debut this week.
And, as always, thank you for your support. Whatever kind of subscription you have, it is deeply appreciated. Monthly, Yearly, or Lifetime. All are amazing. You make The Lunduke Journal possible.
You rule.
-Lunduke
I’ve got the flu (or something else yucky) and need to take the day off tomorrow.
But I don’t really have a normal “boss” to email. Heck, all of you are sort of like my collective boss.
So I’m emailing you:
Boss, *cough cough* Lunduke is out sick tomorrow.
Which means no new shows on Wednesday. Hoping to rest up and be back with new shows on Thursday.
If you’ve missed any shows over the last few weeks, now’s a good chance to catch up.
And feel free to grab one of those fancy-shmancy $89 Lifetime Subscriptions while you’re at it. That won’t make my flu go away any faster… but it definitely won’t hurt.
Unrelated note: Buying stock in Nyquil might not be a bad idea. I think I’m about to increase their profits.
-Lunduke
